Accusations continue

Page Tools

The mother of Michael Jackson's accuser complained that she and
her children were being kept away from the pop star during the time
period prosecutors say one of her sons was being molested, a
witness testified today.

Azja Pryor, a Hollywood casting assistant and the girlfriend of
movie star Chris Tucker, said the mother complained to her in early
March 2003 that two German associates of Jackson had stepped in to
keep her family away.

"I asked, 'Does Michael know anything about this?' She said,
'They won't let us around him because they know the children tug at
his heart strings,"' Pryor testified.

The time period she cited is critical because prosecutors allege
Jackson molested the then-13-year-old accuser between February 20
and March 12, 2003.

When the accuser's mother testified in the trial, she bitterly
spoke out against "the Germans" and claimed they were conspiring
with Jackson to hold her family captive.

Pryor began her testimony with a few tears, talking about how
she met the family in 2001 when the boy was battling cancer. She
said she and the boy's mother would talk for hours at a time on the
phone, but the mother never complained to her about Jackson.

Pryor took the stand after Judge Rodney S. Melville refused to
allow the defence to present testimony by CNN's Larry King that
lawyer Larry Feldman, who once represented the accuser's mother,
had told him the mother was "wacko" and out for money.

The judge ruled out testimony by the talk show host and another
man present at the conversation on grounds they were not able to
say the lawyer directly quoted the accuser's mother.

King left the court without appearing before the jury, and the
defence moved on to Pryor in its bid to discredit the accuser's
mother.

In addition to molestation, Jackson, 46, is accused of giving
the boy wine and conspiring to hold his family captive to get them
to rebut a TV documentary in which Jackson said he let children
sleep in his bed but that it was non-sexual.

Pryor smiled as she told Jackson lawyer Thomas Mesereau Jr. that
the accuser's mother never told her she had tried to escape from
Neverland.

"Why are you smiling?" asked Mesereau.

"It's Neverland," said the witness. "I don't know who would ever
want to escape Neverland."